The Communist Party of India (CPI), which has been allotted Puducherry constituency in the Left alliance, is likely to field former Minister R. Viswanathan as its candidate.
Party sources indicated here on Saturday that his name had been recommended by the Puducherry unit to the party high command. It would announce the list of candidates to be fielded in Tamil Nadu and Puducherry on Monday.
Meanwhile, Left parties such as CPI, Communist Party of India (Marxist), Forward Bloc and Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP) held a meeting here to discuss the strategy to be followed for seeking votes for the CPI’s candidate. Besides Mr. Viswanathan, CPI (M) secretary V. Perumal and others took part.
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The meeting decided to seek the support of people by stressing the need for a government at the Centre without the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). It has also decided to highlight the “failure of Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) on various fronts during the last five years.”
Speaking to reporters, Mr. Viswanathan said the parliamentary elections had given a chance to the Left parties to reach out to all voters of the Union Territory, as the CPI was fielding a candidate for the lone Parliamentary constituency after a gap of about 50 years. The 10-year rule of UPA was tainted with the reports of scams. The Union government, which was supposed to take forward the agenda of development of all sections of people, had only benefited a section of rich people. The Left parties would meet the people with the agenda of forming a non-Congress and non-BJP government at the Centre.